The Internet is growing by leaps and bounds. Everyday, more and more users log on to the Internet for the first time and these, and existing users are finding more and more content being made available to them. Whether it be for shopping, checking stock prices or communicating with friends, the Internet represents a universal medium for communications and commerce.
Unfortunately, the growing user base along with the growing content provider base is causing ever increasing congestion and strain on the infrastructure, the network hardware and software plus the communications links linking it all together, which makes up the Internet. While the acronym “WWW” is defined as “World Wide Web”, many users of the Internet have come to refer to it as the “World Wide Wait.”
These problems are not limited to the Internet either. Many companies provide internal networks, known as intranets, which are essentially private Internets for use by their employees. These intranets can become overloaded as well. Especially, when a company's intranet provides connectivity to the Internet. In this situation, the intranet is not only carrying internally generated traffic but also Internet traffic generated by the employees.
Furthermore, more and more malicious programmers are setting there sights on the Internet. These “hackers” spread virus programs or attempt to hack into Web sites in order to steal valuable information such as credit card numbers. Further, there have been an increasing number of Denial of Service attacks where a hacker infiltrates multiple innocent computers connected to the Internet and uses them, unwittingly, to bombard a particular Web site with an immense volume of traffic. This flood of traffic overwhelms the servers and literally shuts the Web site down.
Accordingly, there is a need for an enhanced Internet infrastructure to more efficiently deliver content from providers to users and provide additional network security and fault tolerance.